Comic-Con 2013 Badge Registration Recap: The Highs and The Lows

After months of waiting, preparation and general anxiety, the day finally came. The headlines read much like a ’50s sci-fi b-movie trailer: Thrills, chills, and yes, even a few spills.

Online badge registration for San Diego Comic-Con 2013 was held yesterday for the general public, and it pretty much went off as expected. That is, more demand than supply, technical glitches and more than a few unhappy people who ended the day empty-handed.

The sale started at 9AM PT, and immediately people were reporting technical issues. Server errors and blank screens were widespread as thousands of SDCC-hopefuls jammed internet bandwidth everywhere in a way only Netflix CEO Reed Hastings would appreciate. It wasn’t until 9:05 AM PT when we received our first report of someone getting into the waiting room, at nearly 10,000 full.

But that was only half the story. As some people were getting the message “the EPIC online waiting room has reached capacity”, others were still getting in. The waiting room numbers reached nearly 50,000 by 9:15 AM PT.

Stranger still, we started to receive reports of people getting into the waiting room from overflow, in front of those who previously reported a number.

At this time, we started to see reports of people who were in the waiting room but they were not advancing as expected. Some were refreshing their screens manually, a practice warned against in CCI’s instructional video, and getting moved forward in the queue. Others who had a place in the waiting room and refreshed got sent to the overflow.

@SD_Comic_Con @xquetanmanchado If it's a blank white page — refresh. It should send you to the waiting room & give you a number.

One of our followers, @TravelPumpkins, wrote a blog post documenting the refresh issues they experienced between multiple computers:

At 9:15am, I managed to get into the waiting room as #37729 with my fastest laptop using the Firefox browser. My friend also go into the wait room as a number in the 29000s. My other laptop running Chrome also got in showed #46465.

In the next 30-35 minutes, my number in the Firefox browser gradually decreased. Meanwhile, my friend remained stuck on the same number while my Chrome browser continued to read #46465. I took a screenshot and attempted to contact Comic-Con’s customer service number, only to get multiple busy signals.

After I finished paying for my last badge, my friend informed me that he was still stuck on the same number. Looking at the computer next to me, my position still reads #46465.

This is not surprising, as badges last year sold out in roughly the same amount of time. Consider this the new normal for Comic-Con. Interest has hit an all-time high, and supply simply cannot meet the demand. Convention organizers have done their best to expand the convention into the neighboring hotels and businesses, and these offsite events accommodate thousands each year who are unable to purchase a badge.

Artist rendering of the San Diego Convention Center proposed expansion.

San Diego has been trying to get a $520 million expansion to the convention center off the ground which would add a 80,000-square-foot ballroom facing the bay, 225,000 square feet of additional exhibit space, 101,000 square feet of meeting space and additional rooftop parking. But this is currently being held up by labor and hotel tax disputes, and the earliest construction would be completed is slated for 2016. Until then, CCI can only do so much with the space they have.

Technical glitches have been associated with EPIC Registration not just this year, but in previous years as well. CCI has stayed with EPIC as opposed to going with other ticket vendors that may be better suited handle large volumes of traffic, in order to keep the costs of badges low for all of us. We all know what Ticketmaster has done to concert ticket prices, adding nearly 25% of the ticket’s face value in fees, and that’s in addition to getting a back-end deal with the venues. We’ve also seen popular artists like Louis C.K. shun Ticketmaster to avoid passing costly fees and service charges to his audience. There might be hiccups along the way, but working with a smaller ticket vendor is in the best interest of the fans, financially. CCI has worked with EPIC to accommodate the scale of internet traffic experienced during online registration in prior years, and we have no reason to believe they won’t continue to work together to improve the badge registration experience.

Tens of thousands were able to get their badges, but not all hope is lost for the scores of others who weren’t as lucky. For them, there’s the resale for cancelled and returned badges, which gives hopefuls one last opportunity to make it to the convention. The number of badges available isn’t guaranteed, but we’ll let everyone know if and when it is announced, typically in May or June.

We’d like to close on a positive note from Chuck star and Nerd HQ organizer, Zachary Levi, who tweeted Saturday following online badge registration:

For those dealing with #SDCC angst, please know that they really are trying to do their best to accommodate as many people as possible…

About Jeremy Rutz

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I think what happened with those people that got in with the refresh method is the site had somehow already cached their position in line. I had three browser windows open – Chrome, Chrome (Incognito), and IE. At 9am, I refreshed the Chrome window, clicked the button, and nothing happened. So I just left it. I then continued to try refreshing the Incognito and IE windows and trying everything I could think of to get into them – nothing worked, there was no way to get into line – I would be put into the overflow sometimes, and other times, it just didn’t load. Then about 9:09am, I clicked on the link in my e-mail in the regular Chrome window and suddenly I was in line at about position 3,000. The line moved by about 500-600 every 2 minutes, and I was checked out by 9:30.

When all was said and done, the only logical explanation is that my original Chrome window had me in line somehow, even though it didn’t display it on my end. Then, when I re-clicked the e-mail link, it just put me in line where my original window had me. From there, it was just waiting and crossing my fingers that tickets were available when I got to the front of the line. You would think that with the amount of money they make, they could come up with a better registration method, but assuming 150k tickets a day * 4 days = 600k tickets, probably easily a million people hammering the same server at the exact same second, not sure how any system could hold up to that. But there has to be a better way.

http://twitter.com/IfIWereMagneto Chelsea St. Juniors

That’s exactly what happened to me. I was using chrome on my laptop and safari on my phone. It just didn’t move at all on the laptop (still was on the page for the green button) safari hadn’t moved either. I hit the green button again on my phone, got the “waiting room full” message, so I put the link in on firefox on my computer only to get the same message.

I waited till 9:15AM and decided it couldn’t hurt to hit the green button again on the original Chrome page I had opened (after also trying to open the same page in the same browser in a different tab and clicking the green button again did nothing) because the worst it could tell me was that I was SOL.

I ended up at number 4,305 with the most gobsmacked look on my face but damnit if I wasn’t in and out in two minutes once I was in that purchase room. It had me in the waiting room the whole time with my place marked and I didn’t even know it. I would’ve closed the tab if something hadn’t told me to just click the button again and not give up.

I had the green button page open on my iPad and iMac (which are connected to Wi-Fi) as well as two iPhones on both AT&T and Verizon LTE. When the clock hit 9:00 exactly, all of them threw up errors. They continued until about 9:05 when they started showing “Waiting room full” messages. Eventually, the computer (running Safari) got through and I was about #25,000 in line. None of the other devices ever could get into the waiting room along with a couple of my friends who got shut out. I didn’t expect to get any badges considering it was about 9:20 and I just got in but I ended up walking away with 2 4-day with Preview Night, 2 Friday, and 2 Saturday badges. Somehow I got lucky as hell.

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The San Diego-Comic Con Unofficial Blog aims to be the leading destination for preparing attendees for all aspects of the convention, as well as capturing the sights, sounds and essence of the entire convention experience.